Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 10:

In page 4, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following:“Amendment of Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005

3. The Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 is amended by inserting the following after subsection (4) of section 311:

“(5) (a) An Appeals Officer shall decide an appeal within a prescribed time of 60 working days from the date of receipt of the appeal.

(b) Where notice of a decision under section 311 is not given to the appellant who made the appeal concerned before the expiration of the period specified in section 311(5)(a), a decision upholding the appeal shall be deemed to have been made upon such expiration.

(c) An Appeals Officer may apply to the Chief Appeals Officer for an extension of time to consider the appeal in exceptional circumstances but the Appeals Officer must demonstrate the reasons for the delay and the appellant shall be informed of the reasons for the delay in writing.”.”.

We discussed this issue at length on Committee Stage and I do not propose to go over the same ground again. The Minister's main objection to accepting the amendment appeared to be that the UK system of appeals was far more inflexible than that in the Irish system and that I was trying to import all of the inflexibility of the UK system into the Irish system. I am not. I accept the Irish system with all of its attendant flexibility. I am trying to make one change to that system, namely, that there be an end date for an appeal in order that people who, in more than 50% of cases according to the latest statistics, have been wrongly refused social welfare would know there was a date by which their appeal would have to be decided. In addition, their public representatives, whom they consistently ask about these matters, might be able to advise them accordingly.

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